Composers have very distinct styles my teacher would joke Mozart adored the triad, Beethoven the octave and Chopin the tenth.

A fun game I like to play myself is "guess the composer". I think I shocked my friend the most when I watched West World with him and after seeing the intro only once I guessed correctly that it was the same composer as the Game of Thrones intro.

Sometimes I second guess myself too much between late Mozart and early Beethoven but I think most the composers have their own hallmarks.

Chopin in particular was quite idiosyncratic because his piano writing was fairly innovative. He came up with a lot of new ways to play the piano and his polish influences and focus on salon music is very distinct

If you haven’t already heard of it, you might enjoy the Piano Puzzler podcast[0]

“Bruce Adolphe re-writes a familiar tune in the style of a classical composer … [someone calls in and] listens to Bruce play his Piano Puzzler™. They then try to do two things: name the hidden tune, and name the composer whose style Bruce is mimicking.”

Of course, you can play along at home as you listen.

[0] https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443927/performance-today-s-p...

I like this one: https://youtu.be/WRfsibwR5x4

This reminds me of Hidden Melody from an old British quiz show that I loved as a child: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Music_(British_game....

Thanks for sharing this - very fun!

Reminded me that nowadays I listen to less classical music than I did so a modification of the game I enjoy playing with myself is "guess the influencing composer". For example I hear so much Prokofiev influence via harmonic language in the early Harry Potter movies and I was listening to Rachmaninoff the other day and thought "oh gosh that reminds me a lot of Kingdom Hearts" and did a quick check and lo and behold Yoko Shimomura cites Rach as a major inspiration. Similarly I often hear shimmers of Ravel in Masashi Hamauzu

Is the joke accurate in this example? Are there many tenths?

Yes, and it can be quite a stretch when playing. Similar to Rachmaninoff in terms of "reach" (but absolutely not in style).

(Am pianist, too.)

>Chopin in particular was quite idiosyncratic because his piano writing was fairly innovative

I bow to your superior knowledge, just want to add for the poor shlubs who are even dumber than me:

Chopin was not simply a composer, but a virtuoso piano player, and i guess because of that he wrote what he wrote for the piano; in contrast to say Mozart who performed at the piano but mostly composed for orchestras, etc.

And the periods of time were different wrt, when Chopin was active, Mozart, Beethoven et al's music innovations already existed, along with larger audiences to play for, which created Chopin's niche

or something like that, i'm not a music guy

Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms (as well as many other composers) were all virtuoso piano or keyboard players.

Chopin is unusual in that he wrote almost exclusively for the piano.

My understanding is that when writing for an orchestra, a composer needs to adjust to the orchestra's skill level and likely err a bit on the easy side for good measure.

Most composers, most of the time. Beethoven, on the other hand, refused to rewrite portions of the Ninth that were maybe too high for some to sing, and you can probably find difficult instrument parts if you chat to, say, Bassoon players.

Heh to quote Beethoven (from: https://brooklynrail.org/2007/07/music/third-party-beethoven...):

> As practice gradually moved away from this insular model, and standing, virtuoso quartets replaced ad hoc groups as the chief vehicles of chamber music performance, Beethoven’s compositions became increasingly experimental (and daunting). Legend has it that when Ignaz Schuppanzigh—a well-known Viennese violinist and Beethoven supporter—complained about a particularly difficult passage in one of the Op. 59 quartets, the master retorted, “Do you suppose I am thinking about your wretched fiddle when the spirit moves me?”

If you write a piece that "plays well", a player can play it well — and give a more compelling performance. What makes a piece "play well" isn't necessarily that it be "easy"; more that it be natural and idiomatic for the instrument... which will in turn be easy.

If you write a piece that a player struggles to play, that will sometimes come through via a muddled and strained performance. There are famous exceptions that prove the rule on this, such as the extremely high register opening bassoon passage from Rite of Spring through which Stravinsky intended to convey strain, or the trumpet squeals of Ray Nance at the end of many Ellington arrangements.

Generally, though, you want the players to be able to play your piece well. And "err on the easy side" is an effective way to do that, especially when writing for instruments you aren't personally an expert with.

maybe I don't use the words right, but go to each of their wikipedia pages and search for the word "court". You will see that Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven depended much more heavily on the favor of the various noble courts, while Chopin and the later Brahms were more commercial (not in a bad way, just in a historical way)

Chopin was special because he wasn't bounded by the orthodoxy - Chopin was so prodigious as a child and had mostly surpassed his teacher in virtuosity as a mere child. His teacher made the excellent decision that he shouldn't prejudice Chopin with preconceived notions of piano technique so Chopin was free to develop his own way of playing from young through his formative preteen and adolescent years.

Wiki entry on his teacher:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojciech_%C5%BBywny#:~:text=....

I think what they're saying is in the times of Mozart, Beethoven etc you would not have been able to survive exclusively or mainly as a composer for piano. A career like Chopin's was only possible later on when music and the arts in general was more established and composers didnt live or die by royal patronage and the odd subscription concert here and there. Chopin is unusual in comparison to those earlier composers but not really unusual for his time. Liszt is another contemporary who wrote mainly for piano and there are probably at least few other lesser known 'specialists'(none of which come to mind alas)

Check out Emmit Rhodes. My only music conspiracy theory is that he was a ghost writer for Paul McCartney. The musical similarities are absolutely uncanny.

There was a time when I was rather good at guessing the composer from hearing a snippet of music I hadn't heard before. We had a group exercise where I had a streak going of guessing correctly every time. Then our instructor tricked us by playing a snippet of a Chopin Concerto that didn't have any piano in it. :)

Love this story. Especially because Chopin often gets flak for his orchestration of his Concertos. Don't suppose you remember roughly where in the music the snippet was?

Oh wow I had no idea westworld and got were the same guy! Both themes were very noticeably a cut above; that totally explains it.

Another thing to remember is that the piano was very much an instrument being developed during Mozart and Beethoven's time. There's a reason why most of Beethoven's sonatas don't utilize the uppermost and lowermost part of the modern piano: he didn't have those keys then.

So, in a sense, these composers weren't writing for the same instrument.

If you play piano much you definitely develop a "style" to your improvisations pretty quickly. It is probably some combination of your nature, what you played early on and what you listen to. Anytime I fiddle around on the piano I fall into a sort of default pattern and everything I do sounds similar to me.

Makes me think that a way for a popular artist to do something "new" would be to take a year off and just play music from artists with a totally different style to theirs. After the year they could attempt composing again and maybe their internal style would have been updated.

Chopin is pretty distinctive. I think the question would be if someone could identify it as “actual lost Chopin” vs “modern composer trying to imitate Chopin”.

The question is, if someone who is a grand master in identifying the “modern composer trying to imitate Chopin” knows so much that his own Chopin imitations become (statistically) undistinguishable from Chopin's own compositions for anyone else. (Except for experts who know every piece of Chopin and thus do not need to identify them by style, but can use “brute force”.)

AI will help/hinder this depending on individual views.

This is topical:

https://www.thepianofiles.com/the-valse-melancolique/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mayer_(composer)

There was another (attributed) Chopin Waltz that was discovered about a century ago, and "professors of music" argued whether it really sounded like Chopin or not. I think they reached a consensus that it wasn't Chopin, but an unrelated contemporary called Charles Mayer.

- "In an email exchange we had relating to this discovery, Stephen Hough wrote (and gave me permission to publish) the following comments:"

- "It was not so much the structure which made me think from the first time I saw the piece (1936 edition) that it couldn’t be by Chopin but the compositional mistakes. Chopin was fastidious about such things and there is false note-leading, inaccurate spelling of accidentals and rough harmony (too many thirds, bad spacing). I also never thought it sounded Chopin-esque but much more Russian. I only put it on as a curiosity and insisted that the notes explain its doubtful attribution."

Very likely. I'm nowhere near a professional nor am I giid at recognizing pieces/composers, but some people have such a deep understanding of yhe music from various composers, that they likely categorize it correctly.

See for example Nahre Sol [1] who plays the same piece in the style of different composers. In order to do that, you need to have a deep understanding of each composer's "quirks".

[1] https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8

> See for example Nahre Sol [1]

Related to her, perhaps see her video "Is Chopin JAZZ?!":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfRqsjQA-4

> [1] https://youtu.be/SAtZawkqBG8?si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4

Meta: The "si=ZObBERSyYD29w4y4" parameter is tracking. When cutting-pasting you may wish to remove it.

> Obviously it's a bit late now, but it would have been an interesting experiment - to ask 100 "professors of music" to guess which composer out of [1] wrote this newly discovered piece.

They'd have guessed correctly. But you already know ahead of time that this newly discovered piece is not, say, juvenilia written by Scriabin specifically to imitate a Chopin waltz. And in that case, 100 professors would have guessed wrong because it would not have been the obvious answer.

Guessing composers based on sound/musical content alone is problematic for many reasons:

1. Common practice vs. composer's idiosyncrasies. Even separating Mozart's oeuvre from Michael Haydn's (Joseph's brother) has been non-trivial-- scholars have gotten it wrong over the centuries. Also-- IIRC there is a research paper about stylistic analyses leading to circular dependencies in the attribution of works of Josquin. E.g., A is Josquin because it sounds like Josquin's B, and B is Josquin because it sounds like Josquin's A...

2. Cross-contamination. Mozart knew Michael and his music, and was highly influenced by it. Compare the initial fugue at the beginning of Haydn's Requiem in C minor to Mozart's, plus the upward cascade of vocal entrances. Additionally, Schumann was influenced by Chopin, who was influenced by Liszt/Schumann/Mozart/Bach/etc. The problem gets worse as you go forward in history-- the next generation can take a composer's entire output and use it as their bible, which leads to...

3. Experts are also composers, and the most highly trained ones can write in the style of any composer whose works they have access to. E.g., Scriabin's set of Preludes was obviously written to be the sequel to Chopin's Op. 24 Preludes, (e.g., Chopin's no. 1 has a few fleeting quintuplets at the end, Scriabin's no. 1 is OMG all quintuplets phrased across barlines till the very end [engine_revving.wav]!). He understood Chopin's formal and textural affinities, could match his virtuosity at the keyboard, and fully immersed himself in Chopin's harmonic language.

I have no doubt if Scriabin had wanted to do a prank (or, more likely, an exercise) by writing a piece to fall convincingly into Chopin's oeuvre, he could have done so at any point in his career.

Plus...

4. Confirmation bias. I really want this to be a newly discovered waltz by Chopin![1]

These are the reasons an article like this mentions things like paper, ink and handwriting analysis.

1: Digression-- scholars also like to omit things that they feel don't reflect well on their favorite composer. For a fun example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology

Not now that AIs can generate music that sounds like any composer.

Not any. If you are careful listener, you can hear musically nonsense (AI hallucinations) compositions. Of course it depends on genre.

I gotta say that with Bach and Mozart, I feel like I could id their pieces consistently. They have a distinct pattern of symphony and motifs no other composers could mimic.

No famous composers would want to mimic. Plenty of unknowns can mimic.

Famous composers mimicked other composers plenty, or parodied other composers, copied them or played homages. Mimicked, yes, famous composers definitely did mimic other composers.

Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 is one of the more famous. It mimics Mozart and Haydn (obvious choices!)

Stravinsky’s Octet is another.

There are plenty of other examples. Those are just two of the more obvious ones. Bach did it. Beethoven did it. Mozart did it.

I guess the subtle distinction here is that these great composers probably did it because they simply could do it as one deliberate choice among many. Lesser composers may be stuck mimicing a few styles because they lack the skill to go beyond them.

But if some unpublished work mimics a certain style, I would assume that it is an exercise to gain a better understanding of that style.

Fritz Kreisler faked some old composers'---e.g. Vivaldi's---work, claiming to have discovered some unpublished manuscripts, but later revealed that they were his own compositions all along.

It was mostly a prank on the music industry, but nonetheless, mimicry of style was involved, and was enough to fool many people for years.

Huh? Bach was the greatest recycler of all time. His keyboard suites were all styled after popular dances in Europe: the Allemande, the sarabande, courante and gigue. He just one upped them to a whole new level.

If you listen to Haydn's sonatas, do you feel the resemblance of Mozart's? Well, because Haydn taught both Mozart and Beethoven.

Nothing is new under the sun, my friend.

You wouldn't have to be a professor of music for this.

Chopin has a unique style and it is a waltz.

This would have been a trivial question for any piano music lover.

The only reason I might not have have guessed Chopin first is it seems too obvious and easy if I had been asked. A new Beatles song might be harder to guess than this.

I think it sounds pretty good too but I would want to hear it performed by a pianist who I like the way they play Chopin to judge it better. It sounds quite good considering I don't really like the sound of the piano that is being used.

I think the only composer who sounds at all like Chopin is Scriabin.

Agreed, though I'm sure there were more obscure composers who imitated Chopin.

Scriabin's op. 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Preludes%2C_Op._11_%28Scria... particularly shows Chopin's influence. I have to admit I like these Scriabin preludes more than Chopin's work.

Tellefsen? I have been a fan for a while now, Chopin's favourite student I believe.